(Note: If the message below seems familiar, it may be because I wrote on the same subject a couple of months back. But new and better targeted quotes have come across my desk that allow me to make the point more effectively. Perhaps it’s intellectually lazy, but some days are like that.)

This has been a tough week for blog post topics. First, I promised to begin an urbanist look at affordable housing, only to be sidetracked by an unexpectedly consuming advocacy task. It was a satisfying effort in which to participate, but left me short of time to get my thoughts organized […]

I’ve written several times about “Twenty is Plenty”, an initiative in many towns, mostly European but spreading toward U.S., to reduce speed limits on most streets to 20 miles per hour. A recent sidewalk encounter gave me another reason to think that Twenty is Plenty is an enlightened concept.

A couple of folks have recently contacted me about the challenges of living a more car-free life in places still oriented around cars. They noted that it is often easier to hop into an automobile rather than to walk home in the rain from a library […]

There can be wonderful uses of curved lines in land use. The curve of a gently bending street that provides constantly changing vistas to draw pedestrians onward. The welcoming curve of a ceremonial arch. Even the curve of an outfield fence.

A theme of this election season has been strategic decision-making around the varying approval thresholds for different forms of tax measures. Is it better to seek a general tax measure, which requires only 50 percent plus one for approval, even if it means battling skepticism about how […]

For the past few months, Petaluma Urban Chat has been reading “The Smart Growth Manual” by Andres Duany, Jeff Speck, and Mike Lydon. Unfortunately, our discussions were disjointed because we had several speakers scheduled over the same period.

It was a shame that we couldn’t focus more effectively because the book […]